I'm in the middle of reading Teach Your Children Well. I like the term cruise or camp director for the parents who want to provide umpteen extracurricular activities. These parents follow a calendar of activities that would challenge a cruise director. They tend to have a pervasive sense that one is not doing enough unless they are scheduled up the kazoo with activities (usually adult-directed) and enough academic rigor.
Every grade, every interest, every activity, every pursuit is a step toward or away from academic success, it seems with the cruise directors. Everything is externally driven and externally motivated.
What's ironic (and interesting) is that internal motivation is highly correlated with higher academic success and lower levels of emotional distress. The driver of lifelong learning, curiosity, persistence, and engagement with material stems from internal motivation as well. Unstructured play provides the greatest opportunities for kids to be curious, creative, and spontaneous - not the life created by the cruise director or adult-directions.
Although parents like this exist, I find it simply doesn't work to categorize parents into boxes - life isn't as simple as that. I'm sure if you looked at two of my children's schedules it would be easy to put me into the "cruise director" category - particularly my youngest dd. But it's not about me driving her to be successful (and especially not about me forcing external motivation or hoping she'll be some amazing prodigy)... it's completely driven *by her* and she's been lucky enough to be in a family where we can make those things that give *her* pleasure happen for her. She simply loves lots of things - and when she likes something, she likes it full-on all-out *and* she asks for lessons. She's had outside-of-school lessons every day of the week except Sunday since she was in first grade - not because we as her parents are trying to push her, but because she begs for them. And she's good at a lot of what she does - but not because she's a prodigy, but because she practices and works at it and most of all *loves* it. She is bored with downtime, and she also has a lot of anxiety in her life due to PTSD. Keeping her busy with extracurriculars keeps *her* sane and happy. Our ds is not anywhere nearly as driven, but he also functions best when he has a schedule and we can give him outside activities to participate in - in his case it's all about his intelligence - he's not getting what he needs for intellectual challenge at school and we are filling it in where we can in areas of his interests outside of school. Part of that includes taking online classes. If you met him, and didn't spend the time to really get to know him, I'm sure there's nothing that would scream out at you saying "Hey! This kid is EG!!! He needs intellectual stimulation!!!"... but as his parent, I know that he is and I know what his needs are and I know how to fill them in (usually!). But if you looked in from the outside at these two kids, it might be easy to think I was a "cruise director" mom.
BUT - if you are perhaps thinking I *am* a cruise director mom... I also have a middle dd who does not like extracurriculars, likes lots of downtime and isn't winning any highly gifted races. She spends tons of downtime just playing on her own and with friends, she is highly creative, and also, um, not terribly motivated. I suspect she'll find motivation in her own time. But just as some kids who are pushed to the extreme to accomplish things aren't going to develop intrinsic motivation... I suspect there are also kids who are parented completely the opposite of cruise director moms who also don't develop internal motivation - at least not while they are children
OK, enough rambling from me
Best wishes,
polarbear
